an almost goodbye
by Aurylie
Summary: She thinks that they will be okay again. But first they have to find all the pieces they've left behind.


**First attempt at NCIS LA, tell me what you think?  
****Reviews are appreciated :).**

**Disclaimer: Shane Brennan owns it all, along with CBS. I promise.**

**XxX**

The rooftop is asphalt and cool to the touch as she bends down to steady herself. She has not let grief consume her so completely since the hours after her father's own untimely demise, the last remnants of a sinking ship all too ironic in retrospect.

Callen's head will not stop shaking behind her fluttering eyelids; Sam's hands are forever pounding at the cooling chest beneath his angry words. Her own heart thrashes furiously against her ribcage at the familiarity of death she had once hoped to escape.

"_I knew you'd find me."_

Using the door handle above her kneeling form to steady herself, she stumbles back through the rusting door, down the steps, and through the twisting hallways that lead her to a narrow corridor with a bowl of half-eaten food. A key glints maliciously in the shadows.

"Were you here all along?" The question is whispered and it trembles past her lips uncertainly. Crimson stains run up and down the concrete, which is littered with sharpened stones and bright yellow eyes that blink lazily out at her and scamper across her shoes.

Clutching her stomach as her breath leaves her, and crouching over a drainpipe that is scraped and worn, she trembles.

"We've been looking in all the wrong places."

**XxX**

In her first year of undercover service, she is sent to Cairo to work against drug cartels and misses a bullet by an inch on her second day. So she is given a bigger gun and a mini-flashlight with extra batteries for safety. They tell her to be more careful, and give her a pat on the back that feels slightly insulting.

And it is not a week later that she and another agent she supposes may be her partner are weaving their way through the crowded afternoon streets when the crack of a rifle sends a man to their left to his knees. Straight through the heart, and they must duck for cover behind street carts and doorways until the screaming stops.

Hours later, when the danger seems to have passed, men she does not know move the body into the back of a truck before driving back down the deserted street. Tomorrow an investigation will begin with the local police forces.

"Come on," the supposed-partner speaks from somewhere behind her. "There's nothing left for us here."

She disagrees.

But she can feel the eyes of the shooters who wanted that man dead, the cold glare of a shot they could take creeping up her skin. And this job is full of empty allies and glassy stares.

When she dreams of it later, she wonders when it all became so familiar.

**XxX**

She misses her twentieth birthday by at least a month. Her team, which is an odd assortment of agents who never stay for long, ask her out of boredom one afternoon, and buy her something from a street vendor as a joke. It is undoubtedly burned in the fire that destroys their headquarters, and she does not miss it.

And she comes to exist as many people in many places. She speaks carefully and fluidly and the line between who she is and who she pretends to be nearly consumes her in places like Samara and Casablanca, where the lies feel safe over her skin.

Maybe she is twenty-one now, with dark curls and a flickering smile, but she feels weary and leaves early in the mornings to avoid conversations with strangers. Evenings spent on stakeouts and afternoons spent crouching in corners, barely breathing as they wait.

She is caught in two explosions and a firefight gone wrong before they send her home.

**XxX**

"Kensi," Callen's voice does not echo like it should, and she blinks painfully.

She follows him without question, the murmuring of police officers and the whirring of a medical helicopter just moments too late. Sam leans against the concrete wall next to the body that was once a friend.

She remembers an old conversation about proving yourself and earning the respect of the team and thinks that he never really had a chance.

The sun is hotter now than before, beating down steadily on the back of her neck, and the blood in front of her sends her back to Gaza, where snipers took out half the unit in the middle of the night, while the survivors hovered and prayed the darkness would hide them till morning.

Life should not end with the fire of metal burning through your veins.

This was not worth dying for.

Sam does not look at her, Callen does not speak. Her hands are shoved into her pockets.

The rooftop empties, and they are alone.

**XxX**

Jason is an old college friend who works for the Pentagon in an air-conditioned office with a nice view. He sits by her hospital bed and frowns at her medical records.

"You're not seriously considering going back are you?" She answers with a glare, but ignores the 'I-told-you-so' tone the question carries.

No, she will not go back to the countries that are as foreign to her as the one she calls home. With a heavy sigh, Jason returns the clipboard to the bedside table and eyes her curiously.

"Is this really what you want to do with your life Kensi?"

They do not meet eyes because they both know there is not answer for that. She is a woman of action and he is a man of thought out decisions and reason. And until the memory of her father stops haunting every sleeping breath she takes, she will not be content to stop moving.

His wife of two years hovers anxiously in the doorway, blonde curls and green eyes that have too many questions. Kensi ignores her for the most part, because she is under the constructed illusion that Kensi is some kind of distant relative, and the less confusion she can leave behind, the better. Often times, the wife (Dana? Diana? Dina?) will open her mouth, as if to speak, before retreating back into silence.

"You should go," she says, and it is almost drowned out by the lazy beeping of her monitors. He tilts his head to one side, and touches her hand gently to draw her attention to him.

"Will I see you again?" is the question he does not have to ask, but does anyways.

Her folded hands and pursed lips are the response. They go through this every time she leaves, but the room is suddenly very heavy and very strange and he thinks she might mean it for once.

Standing slowly, he presses a light kiss to her forehead.

"You should go," she repeats. "I'll be okay."

He laughs, and she notices that the figure with blonde hair that was once in the corner is nowhere to be seen. "For me to think anything else would insult your pride I'm sure." They are suspended in time for a moment as he gazes at a point beyond her shoulder. "Never hesitate to call."

She leaves her cell phone at the hospital when she checks herself out the next day.

And she does not call out of fear for all the things she might say.

**XxX**

"Someone needs to let them know." It is very late, the headlights that sometimes pass by the windows of the old mission long since faded. Nate's voice is aching and brittle, and she knows he cannot stand to have to be the one to talk to them again. Somewhere in the back of her mind, the trembling voices of parents in the beginning stages of grief emerge.

"I'll do it," is the response she did not mean to give, but does not take it back regardless. Their eyes are now curious, slightly alive, almost. She does not volunteer for things like this, and she never sounds like it is routine. But she gathers up her belongings quickly after that, because the room is suddenly too small and they are all so very close that she cannot breath just right. Nate hands her the number and she will call in a few hours when the sun has fully risen.

Gets into a car and throws it into reverse because she is never moving fast enough to escape the sense of loss that accompanies nights like this.

She locks her apartment door in three different ways, and sits in silence until the sobs that are not hers finally subside.

**XxX**

Hetty is the friend of a friend that she saved in a dirty basement during a brief stop to Cambodia that was not supposed to involve any daring rescues. She honestly does not remember his name, but he calls her with sympathies over her injuries and says he knows of a job opening that she might be interested in. When she steps off the plane in Los Angeles for the first time, her limp is lighter and her voice is stronger. But her ribs still twinge when she tackles steep staircases and the muscles in her right hand are swollen and do not respond well. If Hetty notices, she says nothing, and she is taken to a small apartment that holds promise.

When the older woman leaves, and all her boxes are littered in a somewhat orderly fashion, Kensi sighs. Sets up her computer and reads up on the job description of a junior agent. Memorizes her lines, even though they are closer to the truth than any other life she has played. Takes a shower that does not make her feel clean, and falls asleep to the padding of neighbor's footsteps through the wall.

She wonders if she is losing her edge.

And when she does not flinch at the rushing of gunpowder that brushes over her cheek, and two men named Sam and Callen can only stare with wide eyes, she thinks that maybe, she might be alright out here.

**XxX**

"He didn't have to die," Sam's voice is low, and she might have missed it if she had not been expecting it. "They were-"

"Aiming at whoever they could hit." The words are not comforting, and they are not meant to be. The breaking voice of a mother, and then the shock of a father through a dying telephone line will not stop repeating through her mind. She thinks she might scream if this does not end soon. "You should know that blaming yourself for Dom's death will not bring him back."

Sam's fists connect violently with the table. She is expecting this too.

"If we had only gotten there _sooner_!"

"What would you have done differently Sam?" she is exhausted now, sliding down the wall of the bullpen, head resting on her knees. "You know as well as I do that there's not a _damn thing _we could have done differently. We should have saved him. We almost did. If you're going to blame anyone for taking him away, blame the men who fired the shots. Not the one who did everything he could to bring him home again."

And Kensi has always believed that she is defined by silences and telephone numbers, idle gunshots and non-existent goodbyes. So she says strong words for people like Sam who need them, and says nothing at all to people like Callen who appreciate that sort of thing.

And she leaves flowers on the tombstone of a fellow agent who was bigger and braver than he ever really meant to be.

Eventually, she knows, but does not always believe, this will not hurt so much.  
But she draws her legs closer to her chest anyways, willing herself not to completely fall apart. _'If only if only if only you were still here.'_

So she decides that maybe it does not matter what she is defined by.  
Because that will not bring him back.


End file.
